NEEDED: NANNIES

Vivian Smith, Toronto Globe and MailCHICAGO TRIBUNE

A scarcity of live-in nannies and caregivers has prompted the Canadian government to undo a much-criticized immigration regulation.

As of March 16, foreign workers applying to come to Canada under the Live-in Caregiver Program do not have to prove that they have taken a six-month training course, as they had had to do since April 1992. That was when then-Immigration Minister Bernard Valcourt lifted a freeze on nannies from overseas but toughened the requirements for their acceptance.

Now the criteria for foreign domestic workers who look after children, the elderly or disabled people are that they must have the equivalent of a 12th-grade education and 12 months' experience as a domestic before coming to Canada.

The rules have changed because "there were concerns a year ago that the number of applications had declined drastically," said Cam Dawson, a policy director at Citizenship and Immigration Canada in Ottawa.

Several things happened that caused problems with the caregiver program: Fewer women applied, either because they couldn't find courses to attend or had no chance to finish school.

Advocates for domestics, almost all of whom are women, loudly denounced the program as racist and sexist because Third World women were affected.

The program obliged the workers to live with potentially exploitive employers, they charged, and even that rocky road to immigration was being cut off. (After two years of live-in work for an employer, a woman may apply for landed immigrant status.)

In 1991, the government allowed 7,835 people to come to Canada under the decade-old foreign domestic program. Of those, 5,323 were from the Philippines, 208 from Jamaica and 477 from Britain.

By 1993 the numbers had plummeted. Only 779 women from the Philippines came to Canada under the new caregiver program, while 248 who had been in a backlog came under the old program. A total of 22 came from Jamaica and 126 from Britain.

As the number of workers dwindled, the recession hit, drying up demand in Canada and deepening the pool of unemployed Canadians who could fill what nanny jobs remained. Foreign domestic workers who had finished their required two years with an employer moved out on their own and joined the ranks of the jobless.

That prompted officers at Canada Employment Centers to get tough in an attempt to screen out applications for live-in help where they felt live-out would suffice. Simply put, they had to follow a "Canadians first" policy.

In the greater Toronto area alone there are 1,217 jobless people who describe themselves as homemakers, housekeepers, nannies, babysitters or parents' helpers. Only 256 are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents.

Parents are finding, however, that few Canadians are prepared to do live-in work, which is poorly paid, while receiving room and board, a taxable benefit.

"There is a shortage of Canadians available to do live-in work; there are a lot available to work out," said Lesa Robertson, a consultant in employer services in Toronto for Human Resources Development Canada.

But because live-in help is all many employers can afford, "the agencies are screaming for girls," said Marna Martin of the Canadian Coalition for In-Home Care, a national group representing employment agencies.

One agency in Calgary has started its own school in Jamaica to train caregivers for families in western Canada.

While the latest move is an improvement, advocates for the rights of domestic workers maintain the program still turns women from Third World countries into little more than bonded laborers in exchange for landed immigrant status, said Fely Villasin, coordinator of Intercede, a domestic advocacy group in Toronto.

But at least it means that women no longer will be exploited by unscrupulous operators in the Philippines who set up bogus training programs and charged women hundreds of dollars to take them, she said.

Jean Jovers, a nanny and housekeeper in Toronto, said many other Filipinas joke about the two-year program as a "jail term."

While she likes her employer, she must work from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. keeping house and caring for twin 12-year-old boys, she said. She left her former employer, who made her work from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. five days a week.

"I don't understand it," she said. "We are adults, and we are forced to live in. Why does the government want a 40-year-old woman like me not to have the freedom that others have? Refugees don't have this requirement."